State Rep. Ryan Clancy asks questions of a witness testifying at a public hearing on April 10, 2025, about a bill placing to restrictions on the process of qualifying for Medicaid. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) has distributed co-sponsorship memos promoting a package of bills aimed at tamping down police violence and surveillance. Dubbed the “Freedom From Fear” package, the bills focus on facial recognition technology, police training and accountability.
Residents in local Wisconsin communities have called for oversight of police surveillance, including facial recognition technology, and some have raised concerns about the surge in federal operations and deployment of military forces to cities around the country. Clancy’s proposals would:
- Require the decertification of law enforcement who violate “basic regulations on uses of force, among other standards set by the Law Enforcement Standards Board”.
- Prohibit the use of facial recognition technology, which is known to incorporate artificial intelligence;
- Ban the use of Automatic License Plate Readers, which a press release by Clancy’s office states are vulnerable to hacking, despite being used to track and monitor thousands of vehicles nationwide,
- Prohibit law enforcement from requesting, obtaining, or receiving access to an individual’s personal data in exchange for payment or a thing of value and without a warrant,
- Set clear policies around releasing body camera footage depicting officer-involved deaths, with a focus on delays which could give police “the motive and opportunity to edit or delete footage,”
- Prohibit police trainings that include content on “excited delirium,” which the press release describes as “a nonscientific, nonmedical term often used to justify police violence and other abuses of authority,”
- And prohibit “warrior-style training” methods among law enforcement which could lead to “unnecessary injury and death, in favor of aikido training focused on self-defense, de-escalation, and the disarming of threats”.
In Milwaukee, civil liberties advocates and community activists have drawn more attention to concerns around surveillance by the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD), with a particular focus on license plate readers and facial recognition technology…